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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/10/australia-video-game-industry-tax-relief-and-carmen-sandiego>
"The idea that video games are not “serious things”, says Ross Symons,
overlooks the benefits they offer to gamers feeling isolated.
“One thing that struck me during Covid is that games were the way that people
connected and stayed together.”
The chief executive of Big Ant Studios, a Melbourne-based game developer,
recalls when in 2010 the then opposition leader Tony Abbott dismissed the
national broadband network as being for “internet-based television, video
entertainment and gaming”.
Symons says that dismissiveness of the video game industry has not stood the
test of time.
Last year alone, Australians spent $3.8bn on video games, according to the
Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA). The sector is small
compared to large game development nations such as Canada – but that is slowly
changing.
In 2023, the federal government brought in the digital games tax offset (DGTO),
which allows developers who make or port (develop games for systems that aren’t
the ones they were originally on) games in Australia to claim a 30% refundable
income tax offset. It applies to companies which incur at least $500,000 in
qualifying Australian development expenditure and is capped at $20m per
company.
Ron Curry, the chief executive of the IGEA, says in 2020-21 there were about
1,300 employees in the gaming industry in Australia – a figure which has now
almost doubled.
The Australian game development sector now accounts for 2,465 full-time workers
and earned $339.1m in revenue in the financial year of 2023-24. “That shows an
almost 100% increase in employment and revenue has grown about 85%,” he says."
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*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
